a man on foot cannot shoot straight, unless he is standing stock still.
Yet, as luck would have it, this second shot found a mark where the
first and better aimed bullet had gone wild.
Lad had leaped the narrow and deep ditch left along the lawn-edge by
workers who were putting in a new water-main for the Place. On the far
side of this obstacle he had stopped, and had waited for his friend to
follow. But the friend had not followed. Instead, he had been somehow
responsible for a spurt of red flame and for a most thrilling racket.
Lad was more impressed than ever by the man’s wondrous possibilities as
a midnight entertainer. He waited, gaily expectant, for more. He got it.
There was a second rackety explosion and a second puff of lightning from
the man’s outflung hand. But, this time, something like a red-hot
whip-lash smote Lad with horribly agonising force athwart the right hip.
The man had done this,—the man whom Laddie had thought so friendly and
playful!
He had not done it by accident. For his hand had been outflung directly
at the pup, just as once had been the arm of the kennelman, back at
Lad’s birthplace, in beating a disobedient mongrel. It was the only
beating Lad had ever seen. And it had stuck, shudderingly, in his
uncannily sensitive memory. Yet now, he himself had just had a like
experience.
In an instant, the pup’s trustful friendliness was gone. The man had
come on the Place, at dead of night, and had struck him. That must be
paid for! Never would the pup forget his agonising lesson that night
intruders are not to be trusted or even to be tolerated. Within a single
second, he had graduated from a little friend of all the world, into a
vigilant watchdog.
With a snarl, he dropped the bag and whizzed forward at his assailant.
Needle-sharp milkteeth bared, head low, ruff abristle, friendly soft
eyes as ferocious as a wolf’s, he charged.
There had been scarce a breathing-space between the second report of the
pistol and the collie’s counter-attack. But there had been time enough
for the onward-plunging thief to step into the narrow lip of the
water-pipe ditch. The momentum of his own rush hurled the upper part of
his body forward. But his left leg, caught between the ditch-sides, did
not keep pace with the rest of him. There was a hideous snapping sound,
a screech of mortal anguish; and the man crashed to earth, in a dead
faint of pain and shock,—his broken left leg still thrust at an
impossible angle in the ditch.
Lad checked himself midway in his own fierce charge. Teeth bare, throat
agrowl, he hesitated. It had seemed to him right and natural to assail
the man who had struck him so painfully. But now this same man was lying
still and helpless under him. And the sporting instincts of a hundred
generations of thoroughbreds cried out to him not to mangle the
defenceless.
Wherefore, he stood, irresolute; alert for sign of movement on the part
of his foe. But there was no such sign. And the light bullet-graze on
his hip was hurting like the very mischief.
Moreover, every window in the house beyond was blossoming forth into
lights. There were sounds,—reassuring human sounds. And doors were
opening. His deities were coming forth.
All at once, Laddie stopped being a vengeful beast of prey; and
remembered that he was a very small and very much hurt and very lonely
and worried puppy. He craved the Mistress’s dear touch on his wound, and
a word of crooning comfort from her soft voice. This yearning was
mingled with a doubt less perhaps he had been transgressing the Place’s
Law, in some new way; and lest he might have let himself in for a
scolding. The Law was still so queer and so illogical!
Lad started toward the house. Then, pausing, he picked up the bag which
had been so exhilarating a plaything for him this past few minutes and
which he had forgotten in his pain.
It was Lad’s collie way to pick up offerings (ranging from slippers to
very dead fish) and to carry them to the Mistress. Sometimes he was
petted for this. Sometimes the offering was lifted gingerly between
aloof fingers and tossed back into the lake. But, nobody could well
refuse so jingly and pretty a gift as this satchel.
The Master, sketchily attired, came running down the lawn, flashlight in
hand. Past him, unnoticed, as he sped toward the ditch, a collie pup
limped;—a very unhappy and comfort-seeking puppy who carried in his
mouth a blood-spattered brown bag.
“It doesn’t make sense to me!” complained the Master, next day, as he
told the story for the dozenth time, to a new group of callers. “I heard
the shots and I went out to investigate. There he was lying half in and
half out of the ditch. The fellow was unconscious. He didn’t get his
senses back till after the police came. Then he told some babbling yarn
about a creature that had stolen his bag of loot and that had lured him
to the ditch. He was all unnerved and upset, and almost out of his head
with pain. So the police had little enough trouble in ‘sweating’ him. He
told everything he knew. And there’s a wholesale round-up of the
motor-robbery bunch going on this afternoon as a result of it. But what
I can’t understand—”
"It’s as clear as day," insisted the Mistress, stroking a silken head
that pressed lovingly against her knee. “As clear as day. I was standing
in the doorway here when Laddie came pattering up to me and laid a
little satchel at my feet. I opened it, and—well, it had everything of
value in it that had been in the safe over there. That and the thief’s
story make it perfectly plain. Laddie caught the man as he was climbing
out of that window. He got the bag away from him; and the man chased
him, firing as he went. And he stumbled into the ditch and—”
“Nonsense!” laughed the Master. “I’ll grant all you say about Lad’s
being the most marvellous puppy on earth. And I’ll even believe all the
miracles of his cleverness. But when it comes to taking a bag of jewelry
from a burglar and then enticing him to a ditch and then coming back
here to you with the bag—”
“Then how do you account—?”
“I don’t. None of it makes sense to me. As I just said. But,—whatever
happened, it’s turned Laddie into a real watchdog. Did you notice how he
went for the police when they started down the drive, last night? We’ve
got a watchdog at last.”
“We’ve got more than a watchdog,” amended the Mistress. “An ordinary
watchdog would just scare away thieves or bite them. Lad captured the
thief and then brought the stolen jewelry back to us. No other dog could
have done that.”
Lad, enraptured by the note of praise in the Mistress’s soft voice,
looked adoringly up into the face that smiled so proudly down at him.
Then, catching the sound of a step on the drive, he dashed out to bark
in murderous fashion at a wholly harmless delivery boy whom he had seen
every day for weeks.
A watchdog can’t afford to relax vigilance, for a single
instant,—especially at the responsible age of five months.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THREE: The Meanest Man
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
THREE: The Meanest Man
The big collie lay at ease, his tawny-and-white length stretched out in
lazy luxury across the mouth of the lane which led from the Hampton
highroad to Link Ferris’ hillside farmhouse.
Of old, this lane had been rutted and grass-hummocked and bordered by
tangles of rusty weeds. Since Link and his farm had taken so decided a
brace, the weeds had been cut away. This without even a hint from the
county engineer, who of old had so often threatened to fine Link for
leaving them standing along the highway at his land’s edge. The lane had
been graded and ditched, too, into a neatness that went well with the
rest of the place.
But—now that Link Ferris had taken to himself a wife, as efficient as
she was pretty—it had been decreed by young Mrs. Ferris that the lane’s
entrance should be enhanced still further by the erecting of two low
fieldstone piers, one on either side, and that the hollow at the top of
each pier should be filled with loam for the planting of nasturtiums.
It was on this decorative job that Link was at work to-day. His collie,
Chum, was always near at hand wherever his master chanced to be toiling.
And Chum, now, was lying comfortably on the soft earth of the lane head,
some fifty feet from where Link wrought with rock and mortar.
Up the highroad, from Hampton village a mile below, jogged a bony yellow
horse, drawing a ramshackle vehicle which looked like the ghost of a
delivery wagon. The wagon had a sharp tilt to one side. For long years
it had been guiltless of paint. Its canvas sides were torn and stained.
Its rear was closed by a wabbly grating. The axles and whiffletree
emitted a combination of grievously complaining squeaks from the lack of
grease. And other and still more grievous noises issued from the grated
recesses of the cart.
On the sagging seat sprawled a beefy man whose pendulous cheeks seemed
the vaster for the narrowness of his little eyes. These eyes were
wandering inquiringly from side to side along Link’s land boundary,
until they chanced to light upon the recumbent collie. Then into their
shallow recesses glinted a look of sharp interest. It was on this
collie’s account that the man had driven out from Hampton to-day. His
drive was a reconnoitre.
He clucked his bony steed to a faster jog, his gaze fixed with growing
avidity on the dog. As he neared the mouth of the lane, he caught sight
of Link and the narrow orbs lost a shade of their jubilance.
So might a pedestrian’s eyes have glinted at sight of a dollar bill on
the sidewalk in front of him. So might the glint have clouded on seeing
the bill’s owner reaching down for his property. The simile is not
far-fetched, for the driver, on viewing Chum, had fancied he beheld the
equivalent of several dollars.
He was Eben Shunk, official poundmaster and dog catcher of Hampton
Borough. Each and every stray dog caught and impounded by him meant the
sum of one dollar to be paid him, in due form, by the Hampton Borough
treasurer. And the fact that Chum’s sturdy master was within hail of the
invitingly supine collie vexed the thrifty soul of Eben Shunk.
Yet there was hope. And upon this hope Eben staked his chances for the
elusive dollar and for the main object of his visit—which was no mere
dollar. Briefly, in his mind, he reviewed the case and the possibilities
and laid out his plan of campaign. Halting his bony horse at the mouth
of the lane, he hailed Link.
“Look-a-here!” he called. “Did you take out a license for that big mutt
of your’n yet?”
Link glanced up from his work, viewed the visitor with no semblance of
favour and made curt reply.
“I didn’t. And he ain’t.”
“Huh?” queried Mr. Shunk, puzzled at this form of answer.
“I didn’t license him,” expounded Link, “and he ain’t a mutt. If that’s
all you’ve stopped your trav’lin’ m’nagerie at my lane for, you can move
it on as quick as you’re a mind to.”
He bent over his work again. But Eben Shunk did not take the hint.
“’Cordin’ to the laws an’ statoots of the Borough of Hampton, county of
P’saic, state of Noo Jersey,” proclaimed the dog catcher with much
dignity, “it’s my perk’s’t an’ dooty to impound each an’ every
unlicensed dog found in the borough limits.”
“Well,” assented Link, “go on and impound ’em, then. Only don’t pester
me about it. I’m not int’rested. S’pose you get that old bag of bones to
haul your rattletrap junk cart somewheres else! I’m busy.”
"Bein’ a smarty won’t get you nowheres!" declared Shunk. “If your dog
ain’t licensed, it’s my dooty to impound him. He—”
“Here!” snapped Link. “You got your answer on that when you tackled my
wife about it down to her father’s store last week. She told me all
about it. You came a-blusterin’ in there while she was buyin’ some goods
and while Chum was standin’ peaceful beside her. You said if he wasn’t
licensed he’d be put in pound. And if it hadn’t been for her dad and the
clerk throwin’ you out of the store, you’d ’a’ grabbed him, then and
there. She told you, then, that we pay the state and county tax on the
dog and that the law doesn’t compel us to pay any other tax or any
license fee for him. If your borough council wanted to get some easy
graft by passing an ordinance for ev’ry res’dent of Hampton Borough to
pay one dollar a year license fees on their dogs—well, that’s their
business. It’s not mine. My home’s not in the borough and—”
"Some says it is an’ some says it ain’t," interrupted Shunk. “The south
bound’ry of the borough was shifted, by law, last month. An’ the line
takes in more’n a half-acre of your south woodlot. So you’re a res’d’nt
of—”
"I don’t live in my south woodlot," contradicted Link, “nor yet within
half a mile of it. I—”
“That’s for the courts to d’cide,” said Shunk. “Pers’n’lly, I hold
you’re a borough res’d’nt. An’ since you ain’t paid your fee, your dog
is forf’t to—”
“I see!” put in Ferris. “You’ll grab the dog and you’ll get your dirty
dollar fee from the borough treasury. Then if the law decides my home is
out of the borough, you’ll still have your money. You’re a clever man,
Shunk.”
“Well,” averred the dog catcher, mildly pleased with the compliment, “it
ain’t for me to say as to that. But there don’t many folks find me
a-nappin’, I’m sittin’ here to tell all an’ sundry. Now, ’bout that
dog—”
“Yes,” repeated Link admiringly, “you’re a mighty clever man! Only I’ve
figgered that you aren’t quite clever enough to spell your own name
right. Folks who know you real well think you’ve got an ‘h’ in it that
ought to be a ‘k.’ But that’s no fault of yours, Shunk. You do your best
to live up to the name you ought by rights to have. So—”
"You’ll leave my name be!" thundered the dog catcher.
“I sure will,” assented Link. “By the way, did you ever happen to hear
how near you came to not gettin’ this office of dog catcher down at
Hampton?”
“No,” grunted the other, “I didn’t hear nothin’ of the kind. An’ it
ain’t true. Mayor Wipple app’inted me, same week as he took office—like
he had promised he would if I’d git my brother an’ the three boys to
vote for him an’ if I’d c’ntribbit thutty-five dollars to his campaign
fund. There wasn’t ever any doubt I’d git the app’intment.”
“Oh, yes, there was,” cheerily denied Link, with a sidelong glance at
his pretty wife and her six-year-old sister, Olive Chatham, who were
advancing along the lane from the house to note the progress of the
stonework piers. "There was a lot of doubt. If it hadn’t been for just
one thing you’d never have landed the job.
“It was this way,” he continued, winking encouragement to Mrs. Ferris
who had come to a momentary and disapproving halt at sight of her
husband’s uninvited guest. “The day after Wipple was elected mayor, I
asked him who he was aiming to appoint to the high and loocrative office
of dog catcher. He told me he was goin’ to appoint you. I says to him,
‘But Eben Shunk’s the meanest man in town!’ And Wipple answers ‘I know
he is. He’s as mean as pussly. That’s why I’ve picked him out for dog
catcher. No decent feller would take such a dirty job.’ That’s what
Mayor Wipple told me, Shunk. So you see if you hadn’t happened to be the
meanest man in Hampton, you’d never ’a’ got—”
"It’s a durn lie!" bellowed the irate Shunk. “It’s a lie! Wipple never
said no such a thing. He—”
"What’s in the wagon, there?" spoke up little Olive Chatham, as a
dolorous whimpering rose from the depths of the covered cart. “It sounds
awful unhappy.”
“It _is_ ‘awful unhappy,’ Baby,” answered her brother-in-law. “Mr. Shunk
has been on his rounds, picking up some more poor little stray curs,
along the road. He’s going to carry them to a filthy pen in his filthy
back yard and leave them to starve and be chewed by bigger dogs there,
while he pikes off to get his dollar, each, for them. Then, if they
aren’t claimed and licensed in twenty-four hours, he’s going to—”
“Link!” interposed Dorcas, his wife, warningly, as she visualised the
effect of such a word picture on her little sister’s tender heart.
But Olive had heard enough to set her baby eyes ablaze with indignation.
Wheeling on Link, she demanded:
“Why don’t you whip him and let out all those poor little dogs? And then
why don’t you go and put him in prison for—”
“Hush, dear!” whispered Dorcas, drawing the little girl close to her.
“Better run back to the house now! That isn’t a nice sort of man for you
to be near.”
Eben Shunk caught the low-spoken words. They served to snap the last
remaining threads of the baited dog catcher’s temper. His fists clenched
and he took a step toward Ferris. But the latter’s lazily wiry figure
did not seem to lend itself to the idea of passivity under punishment.
Shunk’s angry little eyes fell on the collie.
“That dog of your’n ain’t licensed,” he said. “He’s layin’ out on the
public road. An’ I’m goin’ to take him along.”
“Go ahead,” vouchsafed Link indifferently, with a covert glance of
reassurance at his scandalised wife, who had made a family idol of Chum.
“He’s there. Nobody’s stoppin’ you.”
Pleased at meeting with no stouter resistance from the owner, Shunk took
a step toward the recumbent collie. Little Olive cried out in hot
protest. Link bent over her and whispered in her ear. The child’s face
lost its look of panic and shone with pleased interest as she watched
Eben bear down upon his victim. Ferris whistled hissingly between his
teeth—an intermittent staccato blast. Then he, too, turned an interested
gaze on the impending capture.
Chum had not enjoyed the past few minutes at all. His loafing inspection
of his master’s job had been interrupted by the arrival of this
loud-voiced stranger. He did not like the stranger. Chum decided that,
at his first glimpse and scent of the man—and the dog catcher’s voice
had confirmed the distaste. Shunk belonged to the type which sensitive
dogs hate instinctively. But Chum was too well versed in the guest law
to molest or snarl at any one with whom Link was in seemingly amicable
talk. So he had paid no overt heed to the fellow.
There were other and more interesting things, moreover, which had caught
Chum’s attention. The sounds and scents from the wagon’s unseen interior
carried to him a message of fear, of pain, of keen sorrow. Chum had
half-risen, to investigate. Link, noting the action, had signalled the
dog to lie down again. And Chum, as always, had obeyed.
But now, through his sullen brooding, pierced a sound that set every one
of the collie’s lively nerves aquiver. It was a hissing whistle—broken
and staccato. It was a signal Link had made up, years ago—a signal which
always brought the dog to him on the gallop. For that signal meant no
summons to a romp. It spelled mischief. For example, when cattle chanced
to stroll in from the highway, that whistle signified leave for the dog
to run them, pell-mell, down the road, with barks and nips—instead of
driving them decorously and slowly, as he drove his own master’s cows.
It had a similar message when tramp or mongrel invaded the farm.
At the sound of it, now, Chum was on his feet in an instant. He found
himself confronting the obnoxious stranger, who was just reaching
forward to clutch him.
Chum eluded the man and started toward Link. Shunk made a wild grab for
him. Chum’s ruff—a big handful of it—was seized in the clutching
fingers. Again sounded that queer whistle. This time—thanks to the years
of close companionship between dog and master—Chum caught its purport.
Evidently, it had something to do with Shunk, with the man who had laid
hold on him so unceremoniously.
Chum glanced quickly at Link. Ferris was grinning. With an imperceptible
nod of the head he indicated Shunk. The dog understood. At least, he
understood enough for his own purposes. The law was off of this
disgusting outlander. Ferris was trying to enlist the collie’s aid in
harrying him. It was a right welcome task.
In a flash, Chum had twisted his silken head. A single slash of his
white eyetooth had laid open the fat wrist of the fat hand that gripped
him. Shunk, with a yell, loosed his hold and jumped back. He caught the
echo of a smothered chuckle from Link and turned to find the Ferrises
and the child surveying the scene with happy excitement—looking for all
the world like three people at an amusing picture show. The dog catcher
bolted for his wagon and plunged the lacerated arm into the box beneath
the seat. Thence he drew it forth, clutching in his hand a coil of
noosed rope and a strong oversized landing net.
“Tools of his trade!” explained Link airily, to his wife and Olive.
As he spoke, Ferris made a motion of his forefinger toward the tensely
expectant dog and thence toward the lane. The gesture was familiar from
sheep herding experience. At once, Chum darted back a few yards and
stood just inside the boundaries of his master’s land. A clucking sound
from Link told him where to halt. And the collie stood there, tulip ears
cocked, plumy tail awag, eyes abrim with mischief, as he waited his
adversary’s next move. Seldom did Chum have so appreciative an audience
to show off before.
Shunk, rope and net in hand, bore down upon his prey. As he came on he
cleared decks for action by yanking his coat off and slinging it across
one shoulder. Thus his arms would work unimpeded. So eagerly did he
advance to the hunt that he paid no heed to Link. Wherefore, he failed
to note a series of unobtrusive gestures and clucks and nods with which
Link guided his furtively observing dog.
The next two minutes were of interest. Shunk unslung his rope as he
advanced. Five feet away from the politely waiting collie he paused and
flung the noose. He threw with practised skill. The wide noose encircled
the dog. But before Shunk could tighten it, Chum had sprung lightly out
of the contracting circle and, at a move of Link’s finger, had backed a
few feet farther onto Ferris’s own property.
Chagrined at his miss and spurred on by the triple chuckle of his
audience, the man coiled his rope and flung it a second time. Temper and
haste spoiled his aim. He missed the dog clean. Baby Olive laughed
aloud. Chum fairly radiated contempt at such poor marksmanship. Coiling
his rope as, at another signal, Chum backed a little farther away, Shunk
shouted:
“I’ll git ye, yet! An’ when I do, I’ll tie you to a post in my yard an’
muzzle you. Then I’ll take a club to you, till there ain’t a whole bone
left in yer carcass. If Ferris buys you free, there won’t be more’n
sassage-meat fer him to tote home.”
Olive gasped. The grin left Link’s face. Dorcas looked up appealingly at
her husband. Shunk flung his noose a third time. Chum, well
understanding now what was expected of him, bounded far backward.
“Get off of my land!” called Ferris, in a queerly gentle and almost
humble voice.
“When I take this cur off’n it with me!” snarled the catcher, too hot on
the quest to be wholly sane.
He coiled his rope once more. At a gesture from Link, the dog lay down.
“In the presence of a competent witness I’ve ordered you off my land,”
repeated Ferris, in that same meek voice. “You’ve refused. The law
allows me to use force in such a case. It—”
Deceived by the humility of the tone and lured by the dog’s new
passivity, Shunk made one final cast of the noose. This time its folds
settled round the collie’s massive throat ruff. In the same fraction of
a second, Ferris yelled:
“Take him, Chum! Take him!”
The dog heard and most gleefully he obeyed. As the triumphant Shunk drew
tight the noose about his victim’s neck and sought to bring the landing
net into play, Chum launched himself, like a furry catapult, full at the
man’s throat.
And now there was no hint of fun or of mischief in the collie’s deep-set
dark eyes. They flamed into swirling fury. He had received the word to
attack. And he obeyed with a fiery zest. So may Joffre’s grim legions
have felt, in 1914, when, at the Marne, they were told they need no
longer keep up the hated retreat, but might turn upon their German foes
and pay the bill for the past months’ humiliations.
As the furious collie sprang, Shunk instinctively sought to clap the
landing net’s thick meshes over Chum’s head. But the dog was too swift
for him. The wooden side of the net smote, almost unfelt, against the
fur-protected skull. The impact sent it flying out of its wielder’s
grasp.